Proposal: move templates to topics in the administration web and use INCLUDE

In my home TWiki installation I am trying to move sections of the templates in the administration web (Twiki) so that I can easily edit them.

In one of my tests I have splitted the view.tmpl template in 3 files:

• a Twiki.TopBar topic that contains the top part of the original template
• a Twiki.BottomBar topic that contains the bottom part of the original template
• a view.tmpl file that contains just something like:

...

%TOPTEXT%



	

	
%LEFTTEXT%
	
%TEXT%
	
%RIGHTTEXT%
	



%BOTTOMTEXT%

In my TWikiPreferences I have added the lines:

		* Set TOPTEXT	 = %INCLUDE{"%TWIKIWEB%.TopBar"}%
		* Set LEFTTEXT	= %INCLUDE{"%TWIKIWEB%.LeftBar"}%
		* Set BOTTOMTEXT = %INCLUDE{"%TWIKIWEB%.BottomBar"}%
		* Set RIGHTTEXT  = 

Using the modifications in BetterTWikiTagTemplateProcessing all works almost fine but :

• some variables are not replaced (e.g. the %REVISION...%)
• all wiki links in the text refer to the web Twiki, i.e. to the web originating the included file

Revision info of the enclosing topic

I would like that the %REVISION...% variable is handled in the same way other variables are. A way could be to add that variable to the variables collected in the preferences topics. (this brings me to thinking that some variable should not be overridable by web/user preferences, shoud we open a SecurityAndVariableOverriding topic?)

References to the origin web of included topics

I would like that the text substituted in the included file refers to the destination web . In other way of usage the includer would probably like to keep the originating web references. (see ReferencesInIncludedTopics)

-- AndreaSterbini - 01 Sep 2000

Another way to solve this is to introduce WebBasedTemplateMaintenance.

-- PeterThoeny - 03 Sep 2000